Jack Reacher Novels by Lee Child In Order

  1. Killing Floor (1997)
    After hopping off a Greyhound bus to pursue a whim, Reacher is arrested and charged with murder. After an attempt on his life while being held over the weekend in a state prison, Reacher is interested in just clearing his name and getting out. This novel is set in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia.
  2. Die Trying (1998)
    Just as Reacher helps Holly Johnson, an attractive young woman struggling with her crutches on a Chicago street, they are both kidnapped at gunpoint. Reacher and the woman are thrown into a dark van and taken 2000 miles across America, completely unaware why they were kidnapped and where they are going. Finding themselves trapped in a seemingly remote place, they must work together to find the answers.
  3. Tripwire (1999)
    Reacher is in Key West, digging pools by hand and moonlighting as a bouncer for a topless bar. He discovers the body of a New York investigator hired by “Mrs. Jacob” to find him. He finds out that she is attorney Jodie Garber, daughter of General Leon Garber, Reacher’s mentor and surrogate father in the Army. She wants his help investigating her father’s last project, a search on behalf of the elderly parents of their military MIA son. They soon find themselves hunted by a psychopath businessman and military criminal crippled in the Vietnam War, who has a shadowy business and other secrets to protect. Reacher inherits a house and a steady girlfriend, and contemplates sedentary life.
  4. The Visitor (published as Running Blind in the US) (2000)
    Two women are found dead in their own homes—in baths filled with Army-issue camouflage paint, their bodies completely unmarked—Jack Reacher knew them—and he knows that they both left the Army under dubious circumstances, both victims of sexual harassment. Reacher is under suspicion and arrested; as a former US military policeman, a loner and a drifter, he matches the psychological criminal profile prepared by the FBI Special Agent Julia Lamarr. When another woman is killed the same way while Reacher is under surveillance, he is released but pressured into helping the murder investigation. He has to find out what they have in common and why someone would kill more.
  5. Echo Burning (2001)
    Reacher hitches a ride in Texas. Carmen, the driver, is young, beautiful, and needs help. She has a little girl, is being watched by unseen observers, and has a husband who will beat her when he gets out of jail. At her remote ranch in Echo County there are lies and prejudice, hatred and murder. Her family is hostile, the cops can’t be trusted and the lawyers won’t help.
  6. Without Fail (2002)
    Reacher arrives in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and is intercepted by Mary Ellen (M. E.) Froelich, a beautiful secret service agent. She has a special request: That Reacher tell her the various ways, were he an actual assassin, in which he could kill the Vice-President; being made aware of any such methods would help her considerably in tightening her security detail in order to protect the Vice-President’s life. He accepts the challenge, enlisting old colleague Frances Neagley to help carry out the mission. Suspicious and threatening letters have been sent to the Vice-President and intercepted by his protective team. Together, they attempt to find those responsible.
  7. Persuader (2003)
    Walking along the street, Reacher sees Quinn, a man who should be dead. Reacher is a man who hates unfinished business. Ten years ago, a key investigation went sour and Francis Xavier Quinn got away with murder. Now a chance encounter outside Boston’s Symphony Hall brings it all back. And Reacher sees his one last shot to finish what was started all those years ago.
  8. The Enemy (2004)
    On New Year’s Day, 1990, in a North Carolina motel, a two-star general is found dead. Within minutes, Reacher is ordered to contain the situation. But things soon escalate when Reacher discovers the general’s briefcase is missing and within hours, the general’s wife is killed. Reacher soon finds himself embroiled in a complex game of tug of war between powerful men in the United States Army, and beyond.
  9. One Shot (2005)
    In an innocent heartland city, five murders with six shots are done by an expert sniper. The police quickly identify and arrest a suspect, and build a slam-dunk case with iron-clad evidence. But the accused man claims he’s innocent and says “Get Jack Reacher.” Reacher himself sees the news report and turns up in the city. The defence is immensely relieved; but Reacher has come to bury the guy. Shocked by the request of the accused, Reacher sets out to confirm for himself the absolute certainty of the man’s guilt, but comes up with more than he bargained for. The novel was adapted for the screen in 2012 as Jack Reacher, with Tom Cruise in the title role.
  10. The Hard Way (2006)
    After witnessing an exchange of $1,000,000. Jack Reacher is hired by the underhanded director of a private military firm to rescue his wife and stepchild, who appear to have been kidnapped. While Reacher uncovers clues that might lead to a rescue, he learns about the director’s dubious past which involves a murderous plot against two ex-associates. He meets a beautiful ex-FBI agent converted to private investigator who assists him in the investigation to unveil the shocking truth, and ultimately engages in a showdown on a farm in Norfolk, England. The novel is set primarily in New York City.
  11. Bad Luck and Trouble (2007)
    Reacher is content with his choice of being a loner, a wanderer and being almost impossible to find. But someone makes a small anonymous deposit into his bank account, which triggers Reacher’s fixation for math and his investigative instincts. Reacher deduces that the deposit is a signal only the eight former members of his elite team of army investigators would use. Obsessed with math like Reacher, Frances Neagley locates him because of the brutal death of one of their own. They race to reunite with the survivors of their old team and raise the living, bury the dead, and connect the dots in a mystery that grows more complex with more murders. With tortured murders and the lives of those Reacher considers family at stake, his usual emotionless demeanor breaks and he says of the killers, “They are dead men walking.” The team falls into their old roles and routines with ease, their motto still their sacred rule: You do not mess with the Special Investigators. From Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Reacher gets his old investigation unit back together to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
  12. Nothing to Lose (2008)
    Based in Colorado, traveling from the town of Hope to the town of Despair, it soon becomes clear that Reacher is an unwelcome visitor in a town with a lot of secrets to hide. Reacher cannot resist the opportunity to explore these secrets further, especially the peculiar town owner who has employed the majority of the population to work within his recycling factory.
  13. Gone Tomorrow (2009)
    Reacher takes the subway late at night, and routinely checks his fellow passengers. Four are okay, but the fifth is not. Checking against his mental list for suicide bombers, he comes to the conclusion that the fifth is one. He is puzzled with her choice of timing and place, as it is not crowded; on the contrary the subway was exceedingly empty. He reasons with her, but she shoots herself; thereby proving Reacher wrong when he concluded she was a bomber. He is determined to discover why she killed herself and soon uncovers a massive conspiracy stretching from California to New York City to even Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of that country.
  14. 61 Hours (2010)
    In South Dakota, a tourist bus crashes during a savage snow storm with Jack Reacher in it. Reacher gets caught up in a hunt for a murderer and the protection of a key witness. Meanwhile, a link to Reacher’s past comes to his aid and brings a path to redemption.
  15. Worth Dying For (2010)
    Reacher arrives late one night in a rural Nebraska town. In the town’s fading motel bar he overhears a drunk doctor’s refusal to attend a domestic abuse. The victim of the abuse is married to the scion of the Duncan clan, which holds that part of Nebraska in its grip, keeping the population cowed and docile. Reacher talks the doctor into doing the right thing, and ends up embroiled in a smuggling ring and an unsolved disappearance from twenty-five years prior.
  16. The Affair (2011)
    Six months before the events of Killing Floor. Jack Reacher is still in the army. And there’s big trouble in a small town in Mississippi, where a soldier’s girlfriend is found with her throat cut from ear to ear. Local trouble? Or is the killer from nearby Fort Kelham, a giant base used by elite Army Rangers? In 1997, Reacher’s orders are: go undercover, keep your distance, monitor the investigation. Eventually the army’s official investigation produces a cast-iron prime suspect—and so does Reacher’s undercover search. But Reacher’s answer is not the same as the army’s. If he keeps quiet, will he be able to live with himself? And if he speaks out, will the army be able to live with him?
  17. A Wanted Man (2012)
    Four people in a car, hoping to make Chicago by morning. One man driving, eyes on the road. Another man next to him, telling stories that don’t add up. A woman in the back, silent and worried. And next to her, a huge man with a broken nose, hitching a ride east to Virginia. An hour behind them, a man lies stabbed to death in an old pumping station. He was seen going in with two others, but he never came out. He has been executed, the knife work professional, the killers vanished. Within minutes, the police are notified. Within hours, the FBI descends, laying claim to the victim without ever saying who he was or why he was there. All Reacher wanted was a ride to Virginia. All he did was stick out his thumb. But he soon discovers he has hitched more than a ride. He has tied himself to a massive conspiracy that makes him a threat—to both sides at once.
  18. Never Go Back (2013)
    Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the way from snowbound South Dakota to his destination in northeastern Virginia, near Washington, D.C.: the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP. The old stone building is the closest thing to a home he ever had. Reacher is there to meet—in person—the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner, so far just a warm, intriguing voice on the phone. But it isn’t Turner behind the CO’s desk. And Reacher is hit with two pieces of shocking news, one with serious criminal consequences, and one too personal even to think about.
  19. Personal (2014)
    Someone has taken a long-range shot at the French president but failed to kill him. The suspected sniper has serious skills and is a hard man to find. Reacher tracked him down once and put him in jail. Now he’s asked to hunt him again, and put him away permanently.
  20. Make Me (2015)
    “Why is this town called Mother’s Rest?” That’s all Reacher wants to know. But no one will tell him. It’s a tiny place hidden in a thousand square miles of wheat fields, with a railroad stop, and sullen and watchful people, and a worried woman named Michelle Chang, who mistakes him for someone else: her missing partner in a private investigation she thinks must have started small and then turned lethal.

    Reacher has no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, and there’s something about Chang . . . so he teams up with her and starts to ask around. He thinks: How bad can this thing be? But before long he’s plunged into a desperate race through LA, Chicago, Phoenix, and San Francisco, and through the hidden parts of the internet, up against thugs and assassins every step of the way—right back to where he started, in Mother’s Rest, where he must confront the worst nightmare he could imagine.

    Walking away would have been easier. But as always, Reacher’s rule is: If you want me to stop, you’re going to have to make me.